Ohio EPA- Air Quality Index

Ohio Environmental Protection Agency, or EPA, is a leader when it comes to keeping the environment and public safe by ensuring complete compliance with environmental laws and encouraging environmental stewardship. The Ohio EPA is a state agency aiming to protect Ohio’s health by following Ohio’s environmental laws and policies. These regulations help the EPA make decisions about activities that go on throughout the state. Ohio EPA also makes standards for water, air, waste management, and hazardous substance cleanup. There is one central office that is located in Columbus and there are district offices scattered throughout the rest of Ohio. Ohio’s Environmental Protection Agency does not deal with food safety, pesticide application, or animal feeding operations. The Department of Health is frequently confused with the EPA because it concerns indoor air pollution, water bacteria levels, and lead poisoning, which is easily confused with Ohio EPA.

http://www.epa.state.oh.us/Portals/_default/Skins/EPA2012/Images/epaheader_new.png

The EPA website offers information regarding different divisions of the EPA like air pollution control, drinking and ground waters, and waste management. The website also offers information about current trending topics like harmful algal blooms, fish consumption, Marcellus, and drinking water. I really like how there is a section of the website that informs the reader how to get your vehicle tested, recycle better, waste batteries, aerosols, appliances, household hazardous wastes and electronics. You can compare different cities and their quality of air, water and pollution. For example, if you want to see the air quality in Cincinnati, you can select the “current air quality” map and search for Cincinnati.

 The map on the Ohio EPA website shows that the AQI is 50.  In Cleveland, the AQI is 8. An Air Quality Index ranging between 0 and 50 is considered good. 51 to 100 is moderate, 101 to 200 is unhealthy for sensitive groups, and 201 to 300 is very unhealthy. 

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Cleveland’s air quality is much better than Cincinnati’s air quality

sources:

http://www.epa.state.oh.us/

https://www.odh.ohio.gov/

RoundUp

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Monsanto is a Fortune 500 company whose headquarters are based in St. Louis, Missouri. In the United States, Monsanto has 10,277 employees that work in 146 facilities in 33 of the states. Globally, the company has 21,183 employees in 404 facilities in 66 countries. Monsanto prides itself on being a sustainable agricultural company that delivers products into the farming world that support small and large farmers. Its goal is to have farmers produce more with their land while conserving water and energy. Monsanto hosts agricultural and vegetable seeds, crop protection chemicals, and plant biotechnology traits. Monsanto wants improve farmer’s lives, produce more, and conserve more.  Monsanto sells corn, soybean, cotton, wheat, canola, and sugar cane seeds. Other Monsanto products include insect repellent, weed killers and general farm-productivity increasers. 

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RoundUp use and popularity has increased vastly since 1996. As Monsanto’s most well-known product, RoundUp is used to restore and protect habitats by killing unwanted vegetation in everyday habitats and refuge areas, but it is mostly primarily by gardeners and on farms by farmers to kill all plants that are not the targeted growing plant. RoundUp is the product name for glyphosate, which is an active, broad-spectrum herbicide. Monsanto advertises that glyphosate is water-plant-environment friendly, highly effective on more than 190 species of weeds. This includes many types of grasses, weeds, and sedges. Glyphosate degrades over time in soil and natural water and is withstood by even genetically-engineered plants, so it is more common to find glyphosate embedded in a GM crop than it is in an organic plant. RoundUp contains glyphosate, water, and a soap-like surfactant blend that has changed throughout the years since RoundUp’s first debut in 1974.

                Glyphosate is a controversial ingredient. Monsanto claims RoundUp can produce better, more nutritious food that resists climate change and can help decrease pesticide use. All seventeen experts from the World Health Organization InternationalAgency for Research on Cancer (IARC) meeting agreed that glyphosate is “probably carcinogenic to humans.”  The effects of the widely used RoundUp in America are soaring. For example, butterfly population in the Corn Belt has decreased intensely due to RoundUp killing Milkweed, a staple in a Monarch butterfly’s diet. In response to IARC’s findings, Bermuda, Sri Lanka, and Colombia halted the use and import of glyphosate.

                In 2009, a French court found Monsanto guilty of lying and advertising its RoundUp as “biodegradable” and “eco-friendly.” Studies are beginning to link glyphosate to cancer, autism, gastrointestinal diseases, obesity, allergies, depression, infertility, Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson’s disease. Residues from RoundUp remain in our food and enhance the effects of other chemicals. Glyphosate affects beneficial bacteria in our body, allowing certain pathogens to overgrow once they enter our body.

http://www.monsanto.com/products/pages/monsanto-product-brands.aspx

http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2013/06/09/monsanto-roundup-herbicide.aspx

http://www.monsanto.com/products/pages/roundup-custom.aspx

http://www.monsanto.com/glyphosate/pages/does-glyphosate-cause-cancer.aspx

http://www.monsanto.com/glyphosate/pages/default.aspx

Nuclear Power

Using nuclear energy to power things is increasingly becoming a more popular choice. With global warming awareness on the rise, politicians have never spoken more about it. But what really is nuclear power?  It is generated using Uranium, a metal mined in different parts of the world. Although nuclear power plants run generally in the same way that fossil-fuel burning power plants do, the difference between the two is that heat is generated by nuclear fission instead.

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Nuclear power has its advantages and disadvantages. Some people support the use of nuclear power because of how efficient it is in terms of energy production, cost, and reliability. Nuclear power also does not produce smoke or carbon dioxide; therefore, it does not contribute to greenhouse gas emissions. On the other side, although it does not produce much waste, it is very dangerous due to the radioactivity involved in production and possibility for accidents. For the radioactivity to die away, it must be stored and buried for thousands of years. It also is not considered renewable. There is a general concern for the possibility of nuclear accidents to occur, because nuclear disasters are exactly that: detrimental when they happen.

Animals are susceptible to radiation exposure, making the effects dangerous to animals in the same way humans are affected by radiation. The Chernobyl nuclear explosion disaster, which occurred on April 26, 1986, affected species of animals in the surrounding area of Pripyat, Ukraine. Studies have found a decreased amount of species in the area and a direct impact on their genetics due to the explosion. For example, more than 1 in3 boars in Saxony, which is 700 miles from Chernobyl, are too radioactive to consume for food.

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Plants have also been affected by nuclear power. Waste from nuclear factories harms the surrounding environment, including plants, soil and water. Soil contamination due to the Chernobyl accident has been discovered in France.

Sources: http://energy.gov/science-innovation/energy-sources/nuclear

http://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/ToxProfiles/TP.asp?id=440&tid=77

                http://world-nuclear.org/information-library/current-and-future-generation/nuclear-power-in-the-world-today.aspx

http://www.livescience.com/39961-chernobyl.html

http://www.beyondnuclear.org/animals-and-radiation/

http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/305042